Cologne

3 July 1943 — Cologne

Date
3 July 1943
Target
Cologne, Germany
Force dispatched
653 aircraft
Aircraft lost
30

Narrative

Five nights after the deadliest raid on Cologne, Bomber Command returned with 653 aircraft, the Oboe Mosquitoes of No. 109 Squadron again marking the way. The marking was good and the main force’s bombs fell in a concentrated pattern across the city’s industrial area on the east bank of the Rhine; around 588 people were killed, some 1,000 injured and an estimated 72,000 left homeless. But this was also the night the German defences tried a new answer. Single-engined fighters flown in the freelance ‘Wild Boar’ role were sent in over the burning city to hunt bombers by the light of the fires and the searchlights, fighting inside the flak zone rather than waiting in the night-fighter boxes. Thirty bombers were lost. The tactic was a sign of how the air battle over Germany was about to change, and Cologne — struck twice in five nights with crushing weight — was where it first showed itself.

Sortie details (which aircraft from which squadron, which crew flew, the outcome) will populate this page once the TNA AIR 27 squadron-diary importer arrives.

The fallen

276 airmen in this archive died on 3 July 1943 or the day that followed. For a raid of this kind these are overwhelmingly the night's losses, though a death-date match is not by itself proof an individual flew this operation.

See all 276 who died on 3 July →

Source: Wikipedia — Battle of the Ruhr →